If You’re A Woman Who Votes REPUBLICAN, It’s Time To EXPLAIN Yourself

All throughout the “War on Women” when Republicans were making a concerted effort to inform women that they should NOT be able to make their OWN personal decisions on what to do with THEIR bodies, I found it hard to believe that so many women remained loyal to the Republican party when issues such as abortion and birth control should be non-partisan concerns. But I rationalized in my head that, as conservatives, they are OK with the status quo, PLUS there is SO MUCH green grass on the business and economic side of things (speaking from their vantage point) that it would almost make NO sense to vote anything BUT Republican. But that rationale has now been SHATTERED by Mitt Romney’s HORRIBLE gaffe during the debate, where he not only LIED about his fervour to employ women, but also proved he doesn’t know, nor give a DAMN, about the problems women are facing in the United States of America PROFESSIONALLY.

As someone who PRIDES himself on “knowing how to run a business” and being the “best man to get the economy kickstarted again”, it was VERY troubling to hear Romney stumble through that section of the debate and fill it with RIDICULOUS answers and falsehoods. I want you to READ what he said instead of listening to it, so you embrace the FULL effect of his words. He said:

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?” [1]

ROMNEY: And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women. [2]

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. [3] My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.

She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you. [4]

We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women.[5] In the — in the last women have lost 580,000 jobs. That’s the net of what’s happened in the last four years. We’re still down 580,000 jobs. I mentioned 3 1/2 million women, more now in poverty than four years ago.

What we can do to help young women and women of all ages is to have a strong economy, so strong that employers that are looking to find good employees and bringing them into their workforce and adapting to a flexible work schedule that gives women opportunities that they would otherwise not be able to afford. [6]

This is what I have done. It’s what I look forward to doing and I know what it takes to make an economy work, and I know what a working economy looks like. And an economy with 7.8 percent unemployment is not a real strong economy. An economy that has 23 million people looking for work is not a strong economy.

An economy with 50 percent of kids graduating from college that can’t finds a job, or a college level job, that’s not what we have to have.

CROWLEY: Governor?

ROMNEY: I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.

Now, feel free to call me CRAZY, but here’s some thoughts that popped up in my head while I heard that live:

1. Can’t we FIND some qualified women? Young women are now more likely to enroll in, and graduate from, college than young men. Also, the share of women ages 25 to 29 with a bachelor’s degree or higher has exceeded the share of young men with the same credentials. The idea that you need to SEARCH for educated and qualified women in a state FULL of prestigious Ivy league schools like Massachusetts is MORE than troubling.

3. What flexibility? You mean all that paid maternity leave you DON’T give women? [CLICK HERE]

4. Oh THAT flexibility. Dear Mitt, this is NOT 1952 – it’s 2012, where we have more single, career-driven women at ANY time in history. It’s cute to think women with high degrees and high qualifications all must balance their briefcase with their apron, but that’s NOT the statistical reality of the entire female labour force.

5. So in your NEW economy there will be such a surplus of jobs that employers will be BEGGING to hire women – right after all the good men have been placed? Qualified women exist NOW, but are not being paid equally by current employers TODAY, so what the HELL does having new employers do to discontinue wage-discrimination?

Now I understand that Obama didn’t do much of a better job at answering this question either, and both candidates balked at the idea of putting fair-pay laws into effect, but honestly Republican women, after your party has campaigned on LEGITIMATE RAPE and SLUT SHAMING Sandra Fluke on contraception, how can you HONESTLY in your HEART state that your party now has your BEST personal AND professional interests at heart?

The reason I went in on Stacey Dash on Twitter for her comments about voting for Mitt Romney, was NOT because I think all Black people and all women SHOULD mindlessly vote for the Democrats, it’s because I believe ALL people should vote for THEIR interests. And after she went and wrote this:

My thoughts on women who vote Republican was best summarized by THIS tweet in response to Stacey Dash:

This Is Your Conscience

When Lincoln Anthony Blades is not writing for his controversial and critically acclaimed blog ThisIsYourConscience.com, he can be found contributing articles for Uptown Magazine. Lincoln wrote the hilarious and insightful book "You're Not A Victim, You're A Volunteer: How To Stop Letting Love Kick Your Ass". He is also a public speaker who has sat on panels all over North America and the Caribbean.